Aussie men win bronze in team pursuit

Australia has won bronze in the men's team pursuit at the track cycling worlds after a mishap in qualifying meant that was the best result possible.

The Australian men's team pursuit cyclists

Australia has won bronze in the men's team pursuit at the track cycling worlds in Paris. (AAP)

The Australian men's pursuit team has won bronze at the track cycling world championships in Paris just hours after the Aussie women won gold and smashed the world record.

Jack Bobridge, Luke Davison, Alex Edmondson and Miles Scotson caught Germany on France's new national velodrome to secure third.

The catch meant the quartet didn't get to set a time.

New Zealand won gold in a time of 3 minutes 54.088 seconds beating Great Britain (3:54.687).

Australia were the defending champions but despite setting the second fastest time in round earlier on Thursday (Friday morning AEDT) couldn't progress to the gold-medal ride as they'd only qualified fifth on Wednesday.

A bizarre mishap cost Australia then when an axle bolt failed on Davison's bike and Edmondson suffered a rear puncture before Mitchell Mulhern crashed into him.

Bobridge dodged the chaos and Australia were allowed a restart but could only post the fifth fastest qualifying time meaning they immediately had to settle their sights on bronze.

Davison on Thursday backed the team's two mechanics after they were criticised by some on social media.

"This was the result of a bolt snapping - 100% not the fault of our brilliant mechanics," the 24-year-old wrote on Twitter, also posting a photo showing his right crankset disconnected from his bike.

The Australian women on Thursday upset Great Britain to take gold in 4:13.683.

That time sliced almost three seconds off the world record.

Edmondson later admitted it was a bit disappointing to catch the Germans in the bronze-medal ride.

"We've won the last two (titles) and really wanted to be in the gold-medal race so of course we wanted to go out there and set the fastest time of the night," the reigning individual pursuit world champion told AAP.

"But even though we didn't get the fastest time because they stopped the clock I think everyone will know we were on a pretty good one."

The 21-year-old said Wednesday's incident was a "one-in-a-million fluke" but the team had learnt from it.

"We went in there (to qualifying) and you think you know what you're going to do but all of a sudden a curve ball gets thrown at you, and you've got to be able to deal with it as best you can," he said.

"I think we managed to do that and to come away with the bronze medal shows that we're in good stead for the next 18 months heading into Rio."


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Source: AAP


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